My daughter's school is part of a group of schools that is orgnizing a speaker series called Common Ground. Their latest presenter was Shawn Achor, a leading thinker in positive psychology and author of the Happiness Advantage.

It was one of the best talks I have ever seen, full of practical scientific insights and remarkably simple advice geared not only to lift your happiness but ultimately success in all aspects of life.

My notes were derived in part from the tweets I posted during the event: Overall he proved scientifically what a difference being happy makes in our lives and the lives of the people around us. At the end he gave a handful of practical tips, what we can do now to make us happier. Try them for yourself.

You want to create a new positive habit? Whatever you do for 21 days in a row, on the 22nd the new habit is formed and you do it effortlessly. Like putting on clothes in the morning.

Doesn't Happiness Advantage sound a bit New Agey? Therefore I was a bit wary about this talk, but all of his insights are based of scientific studies.

finnern: Mirror Neuron: People are picking up and mirroring what happens around them: Yawning. -- How can we buffer our brains against negativity? View Tweet

You can try that out for yourself. If you are waiting for a flight and start tapping your toe and looking at your watch, in a radius of 5 meters around you others pick it up and begin to do the same.

This effect is cool, and it ripples beyond the stairs, as all of these people are in a better mood, the mirror neurons do their work and cascading the effect. This is the focus of his studies, how can we make a lasting difference in the happiness of people.

4 small things you can start today that will make a huge difference to your happiness and with that every aspect off your life and surrounding:

finnern: Journaling for 21 days: Write down one meaningful event of your life every day =>

They actually spit a group into half and after 6 weeks the journaling group was 30% less likely to get the cold than the control group. Who would have thought that journaling is an immune system boost.

finnern: Meditation: Take your hands off your keyboard for 2 minutes and just focus on your breathing. => Trains your brain to do one thing at once! View Tweet

How hard is it to take the hands off your keyboard for only 2 minutes per day and concentrate on your breathing? He said that this tremendously helps with conditioning our brain away from the multitasking craziness we are in. Test after test show that multitasking brings down the quality and quantity of both activities that you are doing.

finnern: Your greatest predictor of success is your real social network. 1st thing in the morning send one two sentence of gratitude email to someone · View Tweet

Do something to strengthen your social support network. He is not talking about how many twitter followers or Facebook friends you have. How strong is your soup network? Who would bring you soup, if you are at home and sick in bed.

First thing in the morning write a two sentence email to a friend or family member and tell them why you are grateful to know them. Again do that for 21 days to form a habit and it will have an amazing difference in your life.

Take out all obstacles that are in the way of your desired positive behaviour and make the undesired behaviour harder. Examples: Jogging shoes next to your bed; take out batteries of your TV remote control; leave piano open for your kids to play more often.

An excellen answer to a question from a parent:

finnern: Change the way you praise a child: Praise the process not the outcome. It means so much that you put so much effort in.

When your child comes home with an A+ from a spelling test. Often we tell them how proud we are and how much we love them for bringing home an A+ and we put it on the fridge ...

That has two consequences: The kid learns that it gets loved for bringing home good grades and starts to be afraid to try new things, go out of the own comfort zone, doesn't want to fail. Or the kid fails and the own mental picture of oneself breaks down. The kids thinks it isn't loved anymore.

Solution is to praise the process: "We are really proud about the effort you put in." That is the path to continious improvement.

It would do our kids good if we take a page out of Tom Peters' managment book: Celebrate the spectacular failiure and give a slap on the wrist for mediocre unimaginarry success.

These are only my quick notes. Check out the recording and buy his book.

This was an amazing Future Salon this Monday evening with Catherine Austin Fitts, who spend her last California evening with us. Never before have so many people came up to me, to tell me how they enjoyed the Future Salon, even people that only saw the replay: http://bit.ly/8XoefQ

A friend of mine emailed me:

Gottverdammi - Catherine Austin Fitts needs to be HEARD! She's nailed it top to bottom!

Another friend told me. That was the best lecture I have ever participated in. I seldom watch the replay of an event I participated in, but this one I definitely will.

My notes supported by the evening's Tweets.

First of all Catherine Austin Fitts is just an amazing person. When I ask myself: "Whom would you like to have as a dinner guest?" For me she is up there with Peter Ustinov.

She is super smart, has an amazing background, but is so grounded. She sees the coming turmoil, but keeps her humor and the positive outlook on life. So refreshing.

And she tells great stories: "Remember the Enemy of the State movie with Will Smith? Well I lived through it. [She was persona non grata for a while in Washington, a longer story.] There is this scene in the movie, where even his family believes more the fabricated stories they read in the newspaper. They are that good in fabricating stories, it drives you crazy."

One of her great quotes to live by: Anger gives energy to evil. We need to channel all of our energy to ourselves and those who help and protect us.

She used to have everything under control, the perfect nails and her assistant would check three times the lunch reservation at the perfect restaurant, ... She let go of all of that. Life is a lot more fluid. I chimed in with: Like accepting the Future Salon invitation three weeks ago ;-)

Since beginning of the US until 2008 we accumulated 12 Trillion dollars of dept. In the last 18 months with TARP and the feds printing money we are now up to: 23-27 Trillion dollars. At the same time we would have only needed 8 trillion dollars to pay off all residential mortgages in the country.

What is going on? It is the centralization of the financial system or as she calls it a Financial Coup d'Etat.

She also recommends the movie Inside Job as an accurate depiction the financial crises of 2007 to 2010. Please go and see it, I heard it is not doing well at the box office so far and we need it to succeed.

Once you realize the above facts, it totally changes your approach to solving this problem.

She once got asked to create a economics 101 curriculum for a high school class. You can find it here: Economics 101 - A Curriculum It isn't only for high school classes, but for anyone who is interested in getting a better economics foundation.

In summary. The financial crises as well as the loosing war on drugs are not an accident. We need transparency and to do whatever we can to go against the centralization of our financial system as well as economy: Bank and shop locally as much as you can. Get your vegetables delivered by your local farmer or frequent the farmers market. Get to know your neighbors. Create resilient communities.

On Friday I was listening to Democracy Now and had a driveway moment. I was already at my destination, but sat in the car to listen to the eye opening conversation between Amy Goodman and her guest:

Michael Hudson, President of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of "Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire."

A friend of mine had a striving growing small import business and quit this year because he wasn't able to get credit to stay afloat. It was really unfortunate, that the truckloads of stimulus money didn't reach him.

I was wondering where all this money is going. What are the bankers doing with it, if they don't lend it out to stimulate the economy? Michael Hudson on Democracy Now explained it:

The actual banks have lent less today than they did in 2007. So the money is going abroad. And it’s going abroad not really to buy foreign companies so much, but to speculate in currency.Now, the Fed and the Congress, two weeks ago, said, "We want China to raise its currency by 20 percent." This would create billions and billions of dollars of bonanza for Wall Street banks, and it would enable them to earn their way out of debt by essentially looting the China central bank, the Brazilian central bank, the Turkish central bank and the other central banks, because you can now borrow money in America at one percent. So you’d put down, let’s say, a billion dollars of your own—a million dollars of your own money, borrow $99 million of the bank’s money—that’s $100 million. You would buy Chinese currency, RMB, for $100 million. You then say, "Raise your currency by 20 percent," which is what the Fed has asked them to do. That means that your million dollars now has turned into a $20 million gain, because $100 million is now worth $120 million. You’ve made a 200 percent profit. ...

If the Fed’s policy works, then housing prices are going to go back up so high that most consumers are going to have to pay 40 percent of their income for housing. They’re going to have to pay more money for credit card debt. The purpose is to help the banks make money at the expense of the economy. ...

These people should be in jail, and you shouldn’t bail them out. You’re keeping the debt that was run out by the junk mortgages and the fraudulent lending, you’re keeping that in place, pricing American labor out of the market, and making it impossible for America to earn its way out of debt.

There has to be a better way and with Catherine Austin Fitts' background in the federal government under Bush the first and Wall Street as investment banker as well as all of our background in technology and community, I am convinced, that we will come up with solutions that will create positive futures with resilient sustaining communities. This is why I am very excited about our dialog tomorrow 6pm (networking 7pm talk) at SAP Labs in Palo Alto. Yes we are webcasting and recording the session: https://sap.na.pgiconnect.com/fs/ You can join the dialog in the online chat. Last month we had at times 14 people online.

Future Salons have the following structure: 6-7pm is networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP; 7-9+pm presentation and dialog. Please RSVPhttp://bit.ly/bOFiX5

SAP Labs North America, Building 1, Room: Southern Cross. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304[map]. Free and open to the public.

To help people understand how the global financial system affects their well being, next Monday's Future Salon speaker Catherine Austin Fitts (Please RSVPhttp://bit.ly/bOFiX5) came up with a very simple quality-of-life index based on one question: what percentage of the people in your place believe that a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or other snack, and return home alone safely?

The Popsicle Index is the % of people who believe a child can leave their home, go to the nearest place to buy a popsicle or snack, and come home alone safely. For example, if you feel that 50% of your neighbors believe a child in your neighborhood would be safe, then your Popsicle Index is 50%.[more]

It will probably be uncomfortable, as Catherine Austin Fitts will make the connection from your 401K to our monetary system and how it is enabling drugs being sold on the corner of your street therefore lowering the Solari index.Watch this video:

Follow the money. We need to realize what is done with our money and what we can do to change that trend and strengthen our communities our neighborhoods.